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I have only one page left to go, and I have that one layed out and the text done. With 4 days left I should make my entirely arbitrary deadline of 10 November with ease. Then the PDF book will go on sale for the low low price of $.99 and I’ll put the prints of the pages on sale as well. I may wait and put the pages up as each one gets published as I haven’t yet figured out how to post the images of what I am selling without making the full size comic also available. I will also have the option of getting prints of all sixteen pages for half the cost of buying them separately. I have to tell you up front that those 16 pages will not be in book form. I haven’t even investigated getting professional book printing done, and I don’t know if that will ever happen. If things go well it might, and I have certainly been producing the comic in a manner that would make eventual printing as easy as I can think to make it. Once I have a collection I am happy with then maybe I will go ahead and investigate Kickstarter, but I see that something as far enough in the future as be almost beyond planning.

Just one more page.

It does feel good to be on track to make this first deadline. As you can see from the thumbnail sheet there is only one space left. The first and last pages are next to each-other on the sheet so that spreads can be grouped. If you look at it you may notice that I tried to layout the spreads, not just the pages.

I gave up on getting the navigation of the mirrored old comic working. I have too much to do trying to meet my deadline to complete book one. It’s going to be tough, 6 days and 5 pages to go! I didn’t get much done over the Halloween weekend, at least not on the comic.

Anyway, I used a utility that Frumph includes with comic easel to import the images and title of the old comics that are SFW. I am not entirely happy as it doesn’t include the commentary that I created when I posted each comic, and doesn’t include the reader commentary. However that information is not permanently lost, it just isn’t available right now. Eventually I will either figure out how to add that information to the imported comics, or figure out how to get the transported old site working. It will be well after book 1 start date though.

Now the ‘comic’ and ‘old comic’ links above work. I figured that having working navigation was a critical feature for my launch date.

It looks like I might be on target to hit my deadline of November 10th to have book one complete. I finished and scheduled the 6/7 spread, and am about halfway done with pages 8/9. I have worked in spreads so that the book form will make a more finished package. I am pretty excited really, but I might have set my deadline a little on the short side. These pages are a much more realistic style that is tough to move as quickly as the old comic style. If I run into any roadblocks I could be in trouble.

Ok, so I have a link to the old comics up there, and the link works, but the internal navigation around the old pages isn’t working. Turns out that isn’t a trivial problem and its going to be like that for a little while. I did the change over on my lunch break and have to get back to work.

Hey, but now I can keep you posted! Still enjoying that new site smell.

This is broadly what the new SailorsFreedom will look like. I still have some significant changes to make in the details but I am pretty confident about the framework. Real updates are scheduled to start on November 10th, but you will probably have some blog posts from me in the meantime, and you can start commenting on new stuff right now if you want to.

I finally decided to stop riding my own entirely home-made jalopy welded out of scrap and bought a used car off the lot in the form of WordPress /Comic Press / Comic Easel. Actually it’s not a used car and the system is very customisable. Critically WordPress is allowing for a whole lot of stuff that I just didn’t have the time to write on my own. I had to decide if I was making this website because I wanted to program or because I wanted to draw. Programming can be fun, but it was becoming a chore that got in the way of making good artwork. So here is the new site and I hope you guys like it as much as I do, or at least that it doesn’t get in your way which is all I can really ask of an interface.